Joe Schmidt admitted his over-riding feeling was one of relief after watching his side recover from a half-time deficit to win in Rome.

Ireland lost in the Eternal City in 2013 and a repeat result here would have been a disaster after, as Schmidt acknowledged, Wales' victory over England a day earlier had opened the door a little to a successful title defence for his charges.

But he acknowledged that Ireland have huge work to do to get ready to face France in Dublin on Saturday week after another scrappy performance.

"At the end of it, we got our five points but we were too inaccurate," said Schmidt. "Italy got in amongst us and made it very difficult.

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Every game has an independent life-span and through that game we didn’t put enough together, we didn’t keep the ball well enough, we weren’t accurate enough with those passes.

“We didn’t get too many launching points that were clean. Even when they were clean, like Keith Earls going straight through, we managed to throw that away.

“I can’t put my finger on it at the moment, but we’ll have to sort a few things right before France.

“That’s going to be a huge match for us. We’ve got to make sure that we over the next two weeks keep building.

"There’ll be a few guys coming in and out in the build-up to the France game and then we’ve got to put a better performance together because France look like they’d built a bit (in their defeat of Scotland) and that’s going to be tough for us".